


Underbelly

by damselfly (honeyheffron)



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - No Killing Game (Dangan Ronpa), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dysfunctional Relationships, Kokichi's Commitment Issues, M/M, they're in their early twenties here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29032281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyheffron/pseuds/damselfly
Summary: “Would you be mad if I ran away?”Kokichi wilts in stillness. Shuichi tries to understand.
Relationships: Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 20
Kudos: 99





	Underbelly

**Author's Note:**

> title and text breaks (excerpts) are lifted from nicole homer's poem, "underbelly," which is a stunning work on its own but also has *chef's kiss* absolutely immaculate saiouma vibes

Let me say it  
another way: I like to call myself _wound_  
But I will answer to _knife._

“Would you be mad if I ran away?”

When Kokichi asks him, they are entwined, hands and legs and blood and breath. 

“Would you?” Kokichi presses, pushes, bites; a fingernail slid beneath the stitches, poised to rip them out.

Shuichi breathes. He wants to drown here, stripped between the sheets.

“Probably a little angry,” he finally admits. “Mostly sad.”

Kokichi toys with his fingers, poking, prodding, squeezing, cracking his knuckles for him. Shuichi wishes it wasn’t so dark. He wishes he could see his face.

“Do you _want_ to run away?” Shuichi can’t help himself.

Kokichi’s foot twitches. “A little.”

It’s not the answer either of them wanted. A knot ties itself in the pit of Shuichi’s stomach. “Are you lying?”

Kokichi says nothing. 

“Did I… do something?” Shuichi tries to think. Things have been good. Quieter and kinder. They drink tea in the mornings, sit together in the rain, sate themselves in each other’s skin when night falls. 

“No,” Kokichi says. “Not everything’s your fault, you know.”

Shuichi doesn’t understand. “Will it be soon?”

“I don’t know.” Kokichi rolls over and takes his mouth, hot and wet and hungry, always hungry. Their hips drift together. “Just fuck me again, ‘kay? I love you.”

 _Liar,_ Shuichi thinks, and does as he’s asked.

Here is how one might start: _Before._ The truth?  
I’m not a liar but I close my eyes a lot, Couldbelove.

He doesn’t wake alone. The sun is high and Kokichi’s fingers are tangled in his hair, petting his scalp.

“You’re pretty like this,” Kokichi muses wistfully. “I bet you don’t even know it. I bet you don’t think you’re anything special. It’s annoying.”

Shuichi catches his wrist and presses a kiss there. Kokichi’s pulse flutters across his mouth. He hopes, half desperately, that their last conversation has been forgotten.

He feels Kokichi’s finger bend to draw along the slope of his Cupid’s bow. “You should stay home today.” 

Shuichi sighs, “I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair. Cases are piling up.”

“Fine, Detective Downer,” Kokichi scoffs, “Then I think I’ll go somewhere today, too.”

Shuichi doesn’t bother asking where. He knows Kokichi would lie, anyway. “And you’ll come back?”

Kokichi’s smile twists. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Not forgotten, then. Shuichi doesn’t like this new game they’re playing. There aren’t any rules and the gangway between them is fracturing.

Before they were here, before they were anything, Kokichi stumbled his way to Shuichi’s door on an icy night, love-bitten lips and flower-shaped bruises. _I kissed him,_ he’d said, _I kissed him and all I tasted was you. Isn’t that funny?_

Shuichi didn’t think it was. He questions whether the taste of Kokichi will ever be something he can forget.

I can’t promise  
to leave you unscarred. The truth: I am a map  
of every blade I ever held. This is not a dream.

Kokichi disappears for a week. There’s no note. Shuichi calls, but no one answers.

He doesn’t cry. He won’t let himself.

Kaede sits with him and holds his hand, tells him it’s not his fault. Kaito tells him he should be angrier than he is. Shuichi thinks they’re both wrong.

A week. He eats, drinks his tea, goes to work. He doesn’t sleep much. The bed stays cold, no matter how many blankets he pulls around himself.

Kokichi has (had?—the past tense seems worse than his absence) a tattoo just above his hip, thin black lines in the shape of two dice. Shuichi would trace his tongue over it and Kokichi would grip his hair and mewl _lucky me._ Shuichi wonders if the other half of that sentiment has always been _unlucky you._ Polarity is the heat between them, after all. Perhaps it is also the bleak east wind to drive them apart.

He solves another case that ends in infidelity, a hapless husband sleeping with the family babysitter. The poor wife breaks down at Shuichi's desk and he knows, doubtlessly, that the truth must always be more painful than uncertainty.

Look at us now: all grit and density. What, Wouldbelove  
do you know of knives? Do you think you are a soft thing?  
I don’t. Maybe the truth is: Both. Blade and guard.

Kokichi returns on a stormy Tuesday.

There is no uncertainty. There are no words. Kokichi grins at him and Shuichi feels nothing. Everything.

Kokichi ducks under Shuichi’s arm, slips back in through the doorway. “Didja miss me?”

Shuichi says nothing.

“C’mon. You did.”

Nothing.

“Silent treatment, Shumai? That’s boring, even for you.”

Nothing. Kokichi rolls his eyes and adeptly switches tactics. The game only ever shifts with his will.

“Well, you’re sort of stupid, Shuichi. Letting me close to you. You think I’m not as cruel as everyone says, but what if I am? They warned you, didn’t they?”

“So what?”

Kokichi blinks. “…What?”

“So what,” Shuichi snaps, “Do you want me to say I’d leave?”

“I want you to lie,” Kokichi smirks, “And say you wouldn’t.”

“That’s not a lie. I really wouldn’t.”

The winds change across Kokichi’s face. “Yes, you would!” He shouts. Shuichi starts to laugh, helplessly, at the absurdity of it. Kokichi barrels on. “Shut up! You would!”

“Why are you angry?”

“Because you—you’re lying! You go on and on about the truth and then you, you say these things that don’t make sense! You’re _stupid._ You should want to leave. I love you and you’re supposed to leave.”

“I don’t understand,” Shuichi tries. He’s out of energy.

“Stop it! You’re supposed to be the one who gets it. Why don’t you get it?”

The tears start coming down, a stream of pink-flushed misery. Shuichi knows they’re real for the way Kokichi tries to hide his face. He reaches for him. Kokichi slaps his hand away. “No, don’t touch me. I hate it when you touch me.”

“Liar,” Shuichi murmurs, and pulls him in. Kokichi smacks his chest, once, twice, fighting—and then falling, sobbing in earnest, a rasping symphony of pain Shuichi isn’t sure he’ll ever know the depth of.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” Shuichi whispers.

Kokichi babbles, brittle and breakable as bone, “I’m _not_ crying. I’m not. I hurt you. You’re supposed to be crying.”

“You hurt me,” Shuichi agrees, soothing his palm down Kokichi’s spine, “But I think you hurt yourself, too.”

“I had to _know,_ ” Kokichi wails. He doesn’t elaborate, but Shuichi knows where he’d been heading: _I had to know you’d open the door again. I had to know I couldn’t break you._

The truth is: I want to hold your hands  
because they are like mine. Holding a knife  
by the blade and sharpening it.

“Hey.”

They take a bath together. Kokichi’s ankle knocks his own under the water. Shuichi knocks his right back. “Hm?”

“I’m… gonna stay, for now. Just so you know.” Kokichi pinches his knee, and Shuichi squirms softly. “You were thinking way too hard about it, anyway.”

 _Was I?_ Shuichi wants to tease him, but settles for, “Good. I’m glad, Kichi.”

“Course you are,” Kokichi hums. Shuichi curls to nip at his jaw, tasting soap and salt and sweet.

How to love a thief? How to love a liar? _Easily,_ Shuichi would answer. _Like breathing. He is that and more._

The truth is: I have made fire  
before: stone against stone. Mightbelove, I have sharpened  
this knife before: blade against blade. I have hurt and hungered  
before: flesh against flesh.  
I won’t make a dull promise.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and feedback are sincerely appreciated! stay safe out there and big love to you <33


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